Taking the crucified people down from the cross . Child sex abuse in catholic residential schools in Canada and Scotland

Contemporary clerical child sex abuse has resulted in serious long term mental and physical illness for many of the victims and an ongoing scandal that has damaged the reputation of the Catholic church worldwide. Clerical child sex abuse and the inconsistent and often ineffective responses from the Catholic Church have been researched from a wide variety of perspectives: legal, ecclesial, sociological, psychological, theological and crisis management. This article is focussed on the accounts of the circumstances of clerical sexual abuse in some of the Catholic residential schools in Canada and Scotland, as represented in documentation from government inquiries. Adults other than priests, religious brothers and sisters also engaged in this sexual abuse. Two hermeneutical lenses are adopted to analyse these accounts of sexual abuse and the response from the Catholic church to accusations of sex abuse in some of their institutions. First, the adoption of image repair theory from the perspective of crisis management and, second, from a Catholic theological perspective, the theology of the cross of Moltmann. This latter lens was applied by Ignacio Ellacuría and Jon Sobrino to the context of late twentieth century El Salvador and they argued that the oppressed people of El Salvador had to be taken down from the cross so that they could rise again. Similarly, the adults who were sexually abused as children now have to be taken down from the cross.